A visit to the Museum of Paleontology

Guestbook

Last week was Science and Technology Week of our school, during which the Biology and Geography teaching and researching group offered some of our students a chance to visit the Nanjing Museum of Palaeontology, and I was lucky enough to get the opportunity. That weekend, our Chinese teacher assigned an informal essay, and I wrote the reflections on the visit and my thoughts on studying Geography. Later, that essay received a quite high mark - I realised from reading my Chinese teacher’s comments that her husband is a geography teacher, and she got touched by my enthusiasm. I never think I’m a good writer or a profound thinker, but I did want to translate and post this article here, as a way of recording of my little reflections as I am growing up.

A visit to the Museum of Paleontology

Fang Ziyan Class 7

Cold front crossing.

Rolling stratus clouds.

The sunlight lovingly linger on the autumn day.

I.

In May of Grade 10, I finally decided that I wanted to apply for a Geography major in the future. Although I had been preparing to apply to the UK for nearly a year, it was still a little late to decide on this major. However, the more I tried it, the more I felt I was suited to it, and then it became an overwhelming passion. Within five months, I had read some books and accumulated some knowledge. The museum visit organised by the our school’s geography and biology teaching and researching groups was a even good opportunity to practise.

I had memorised so many theories, but it wasn’t until I stood in front of a whole wall of fossils of different shapes and colours that I understood the meaning of the words in black and white. For example, I recognised the rounded spiral shape of ammonite, but I didn’t know that it had evolved from hornblende: the long, pointed shell of hornblende make it not easy for them to balance themselves, so the pointed shell eventually developed into a flat shell of ammonite. What’s more, I had of course recited that the ammoite was the standard fossil with a fast rate of evolution and a short existence time, but by asking the docents I learned that it did not survive the Cretaceous extinction because the acidic seawater made the calcium brittle and caused it to become less resistant to pressure.

From being a little kid hanging out in museum galleries and illustrations in encyclopaedias, to being an afterthought in choosing a specialisation and learning loads of related knowledge, to now hanging out in museum galleries again with a few geology-loving kids with me and asking a series of questions to the docents: Your vision determines your choices, and your choices again determine your vision.

II.

Step ahead into the second year of high school, students around me began to get anxious. There is always endless homework and frequent exams. For those of us who are studying in ordinary Chinese high schools and want to apply for foreign universities, it is really challenging to not only follow the courses of gaokao (the college entrance examination of China) but also learn foreign high school courses on our own. In addition, although I love my major, geography, there are quite few people around me who apply for it, so I feel a little lonely sometimes.
Interestingly, however, it’s not like what people always say – “You might find solace from something other than studying, e.g. travalling, playing video games, to ease your anxiety.”

Sometimes the solace comes from your major itself. No matter how you grumble the boring life you might face in order to successfully apply for it, if you love it enough, it will embrance you back with its own little philosophies - as an antidote to your anxiety.

Walking around the museum, I gained new insights into many familiar knowledge. Think of the five great biological extinctions, always followed by an explosion of new creature. Think of the Milankovitch and Wilsonian gyrations, everything separate and emerge again and again. Think of the red junipers on top of the mountains, sweeping the clouds from the fog and sleeping on the moon for thousands of years. Think of the sands of the desert, with the sun rises and the moon sinks, only to be silent. Think of the basalt cape, with the tide rises and falls, the waves open and close, only to stands still. Why worry that there are no companions? Why be anxious about the boring and tiring endless days?

III.

There are times when I want to ask myself, where do my passion for the subject of geography come from?

When I was a child, my grandfather loved to study with an Atlas of China, and every time I went out on public transport he would tell me about the traffic routes. Kindergarten overs early every day, so he would always take me around Nanjing on his bicycle to various places of interest. I also remember that my favourite set of books as a child was the Encyclopaedia my mother bought me, which talked about the earth and the universe and had all kinds of restored pictures of ancient creatures. Also, every summer and winter, I always had the opportunity to go back to my hometown in Anhui, to see the mountains and fields, to watch the fireworks under the stars, and to listen to the adults in the village chat happily about the minutiae of their lives: how the weather affected the harvest, how much money they made from selling vegetables, which mountain to climb tomorrow, and whose field was going to be used by the town for constructing buildings. Perhaps this is why I had more experience of enjoying thenature and living in the town than other city children. Also, probably one of the most important things is that my dad is a crazy travel lover. There’s no denying that the days spent travelling with him to Europe, the USA, Japan and Korea and many of the provinces in China have become become a thick background of my life.

IV.

On the way back to school, sky is clear, clouds are light, trees are bright yellow. The wind blows, and the ginkgo leaves fell in a shallow warm sun.

The ginkgo is the seven-million-year-old ginkgo.

The sun is the eternal sun.

A speech about GLOBAL WARMING in English class

Guestbook

I delievered a 20-minute speech in our English class this Thursday. Though it was a really long speech, my classmates listened very carefully. After the speech, my English teacher asked them several questions to check whether they have learned anything it. Surprisingly, many of my classmates could repeat the framework and even content of my speech, which made me both moved and pleased. Some of my friends wanted me to send my powerpoint slide to them online because they got pretty interested in this topic and hoped to do some further study.Though I don’t think my research is comprehensive enough for the limited preparation time, helping classmates broaden their horizons and arosing their interest in this important topic was truly a satisfactory thing for me. The following is my speech and PPT slide.

GLOBAL WARMING

Good afternoon everyone. The 2021 Nobel Prize in physics amazed phycis lovers all over the world. It is the first time that Nobel Prize in physics was given to meteorology. You can see here that two of this year’s prize winners are meteorologists, which means who study the whether system and climate system. The Nobel committee’s decision seems can prove that climate change has become one of the severe issues affecting human society.

Today I would like to introduce you the main cause of climate change——global warming. I’m going to explain how global warming is formed, what crises it will lead to, and our solutions to this issue.

1. Cause of global warming

First let’s see how global warming is formed. For 2.5 million years the Earth’s climate has fluctuated, cycling from ice ages to warmer periods, but in the last century the planets’ temperature has risen unusually fast. Scientists believe it’s human activity that’s driving the temperatures up, a process known as ‘global warming’.

Ever since the industrial revolution began, factories, power plants and eventually cars have burned fossil fuels such as oil and pull, releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere.

These greenhouse gases trap heat near the earth through a naturally occurring process called the greenhouse effect, which means they trap some of the energy the earth radiates and reflect it back, warming the earth. Scientists now believe that the greenhouse effect is being intensified by the extra greenhouse gases that humans have released.

2. Crises caused by global warming


Some of you might ask, it’s normal for the temperature to have a slight change. We’ve experienced colder days and hotter days. A little bit of temperature rise seems won’t affect us that much.

However, that’s not the case. The speed of warming is unequal for different places on the earth, and among which the fastest ones are the polar areas. According to the polar amplification effect, if the earth’s temperature increase 2℃, then the temperature in polar areas will increase at least 10℃. You could see here the change of area covered by ice in north pole from 1975 to 2020.

As the ice melts, sea level rises, flooding coastal areas around the world. And we know that coastal areas are often important trade centers, for instance Shanghai and New York. What’s more, permafrost, which means frozen soil, will also melt and emit more carbon because there are methane(CH4) inside, which is another kind of greenhouse gases. Thirdly, as ice melts, the inhabitat for animals in polar areas is rapidly decreasing, and hence some species including the polar bear would face the danger of extinction.

We could see that all these three crises are caused by the rising temperature. However, does global warming only mean increasing temperature? Let’s see another example.

In February 2021, in the midst of rapidly warming global temperatures, an exceptionally severe cold wave hit large parts of North America, from Canada to Northern Mexico, leaving 10 million people without power. It was the coldest February In the U.S. in more than 30 years. Donald Trump posted a Twitter to complain about the cold wave and question the global warming. For example, he said:”windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. What the hell is going on with Global Warming? Please come back fast, we need you!” He never believes in the existence of global warming, and he thinks ‘global warming’ and ‘extreme cold’ are totally unrelated things. However, that’s not the case.

In fact, it is the global warming that lead to this extreme cold. Actually, global warming will cause something called Unusual Planetary Wave Patterns, you can understand it as the distortion of climate system. And hence global warming will not only leads to extreme hot, it will also lead to extreme cold, extreme dry, extreme wet, etc. This theory is very complex and it’s hard to explain, but I will give you some examples to help you understand better.

We know that Brazil is in South America and there is a famous forest called Amazon rainforest. Rising temperatures resultes in less rainfall brought by the ocean currents, hence Brazil is getting drier and drier. Drought, high temperature, rainforest——what would happen? Forest fire. This is a picture of South America in 2019, the red point indicating there was a forestfire.

Circumstance in Australia is very similar. The four-month fire killed 3 billion animals and set Australia’s highest temperature on record for three days in a row.

Now let’s see the extreme cold in America. We mentioned that global warming can lead to disorders of the climate system, and among which one consequence is the spread of cold air over the Arctic. (This may be a little difficult to understand. You don’t need to understand why, it’s just a result.) What’s more, we know that there are mountains on the east and west sides of North America, and there is a plain in the middle, so the cold air from the Arctic does not spread on the west-east direction. As a result, cold air is concentrated in the center areas herr, leading to the extreme cold in the United States in February.

We’ve discussed about two kinds of crises that global warming may result in —— firstly, the rising temperature and its further consequences shows that global warming is part of climate change; secondly, global warming is also a cause of climate change as it leads to the distortion of climate system. Last but not least, I want to say that global warming is a cause of further global warming as well. As ice melts, rocks are exposed, which is easier to absorb heat. Permafrost melts, emitting methane(CH4), which is another greenhouse gas. AS global wildfire season extends, there are less trees and hence less carbon will be absorbed…… And all of these consequences will again intensify the global warming.

3. How to deal with global warming?

Finally, let us discuss how to deal with global warming and climate change. I don’t know whether you’ve ever followed the climate conferences, but at least for me, sometimes the climate conference is not like a meeting, it’s more of a quarreling. Every country has its own opinions. Last year, the United States even formally withdrew from the Paris Agreement. As global warming is such a severe issue, why it is so hard for countries to reach a consensus on solving it?

Nowadays an important way to deal with global warming is to limit carbon emissions. Carbon emission permits are given to each country according to their national circumstances. If the country doesn’t run use up all of their carbon permits, they can sell them to other countries; on the contrary, if a country’s carbon emission permit is not enough to use, then it has to buy from others.

In fact, developing countries, for example China and India, are currently the countries which emit the most carbon because of industrial production. On the other hand, developed countries have entered the post-industrial era with less carbon emissions, as they don’t need such large scale of industrial production and they have also developed some green technologies. For the developing countries, limiting carbon emissions actually means limiting development. But the developed countries won’t be restricted in this way. They can even sell permits unused to other countries and hence gain profit.

Thirdly, some island nations and a few coastal countries in Africa have a different idea: they are extreme environmentalists. They don’t have the need for industrial production, right? Some of them are in still in primary society or mainly depends on agricultural development. Hence they are also not afraid for the carbon emission limitation. However, these countries are close to the ocean and can easily be flooded once sea levels rise, so they are not satisfied with the current temperature target set by the United Nation(2℃) and are always requiring for a stricker target, 1.5℃ for example.

4. Summary

To summarize today’s speech, we have learned that it is human activity that caused global warming, and there are several crises that it may lead to. Firstly, global warming will directly result in rising temperature, which is part of climate change. Secondly, global warming is also a cause of climate change as it leads to the distortion of climate system. Lastly, global warming is a cause of further global warming as well. However, each country has its own idea on how to deal with this severe issue. Though fighting with global warming might be an arduous journey, I am still confident that us human-being have the wisdom and the ablility to save ourselves. That’s all of my speech, thank you for your patient listening.

A national speech about Linguistics Society Operation

Guestbook

This term I have set up a linguistics club with Yibo Zhao. He is the president and is responsible for the production of posters and the preparation of linguistics presentations. I am the vice president and am also the national campus ambassador for linguistics, responsible for leading the club menbers to practice for the International Olympics Linguistic and writing summaries and reports on our activities to be submitted to the committee of IOLC (International Olympics Linguistic China). Our club has been well received by the students since its inception and we have held many successful events, which has helped us to maintain our first place in the national ranking of clubs. At the end of November, the IOLC committee invited me to give an online talk to linguistics club leaders across the country about my experience and that of our club. I then completed a speech draft below, which includes my thoughts on running a society, some of the activities I have organised with Yibo, and some event references for other club presidents.

(p.s. I have posted the link of my sharing speech and the video of our club activity and the end of this article. My powerpoint slide has also been appended.)

Hello everyone, I am Fang Ziyan, the vice president of the Linguistics Society of Nanjing Foreign Language School. Its my pleasure to make this speech here. Our club has just been established this year, so as a founder of a new club, I am willing to share with you about some of the experiences I have gained during my exploration.
There will be a number of specific activity design references in my sharing, but before that, I would like to say something about the underlying logic of club operations.

(A) The Underlying Logic of Society Operation

I often reflect on a question. Why do we always write flowery hanrangue to present our establishment purpose when applying for the club, but often feel that these sonorous and powerful words look kind of hollow and unrealistic? Why do we always initially plan the school year club activities with fully enthusiasm, but eventually have to face the frustration that the gap between our imagination and the reality is too large?
I think that many society operators will encounter such confusion. So today, I want to start from the underlying logic of society operation and discuss what a truly “excellent” student society should be like.

First, let us return to the definition of a society. What we call a club, or a society, is actually an organization formed by people who have certain common characteristics and hobbies. Here, there are two key words, the first is “common characteristics” and the second is “people”. When we design activities, our ideas often start from this “common characteristics”, thinking about which linguistic-related activities can be organized, including field research, lecture, project study, etc. However, we often find these ideas unrealistic for senior high students to carry out. Hence now, let us change our ways of thinking, from the aspect of “people”—— those who are interested in our society, and the schoolmates around us. What kind of needs do they have? What kind of knowledge and experience are they yearn for through linguistic club activities?

Take our school for example. We faced an important question when we planned to established the society: Who is this society for? There are roughly three types of students in our school: students going abroad for college study, students who will be recommended by school to language majors in top universities in China, and students preparing for the college entrance examination. Our current president Zhao is students applying for language majors, and I am a student preparing to go abroad. Zhao said, our school’s recommended students will learn English, German, French, Japanese or other minor languages in college, however many of them are unfamiliar with their future majors because they often dedicate a lot to mathematics, physics or chemistry competitions in order to get the qualification to be recommended by our school. Hence Zhao suggested that we can popularize some knowledge that these students have better to master or are about to learn in the university for them through this society. On the other hand, as a student who have participated in the International Olympics Linguistic, I deeply understand the difficulty of preparing the competition alone, not to mention the fact that Nanjing Foreign Language School has loads of IOL contestants but no communication platform is there for them. Hence, I hope to provide some sharing to the students preparing for IOL. After discussion, Zhao and I decide that instead of working separately, it is better to collaborate and to establish a comprehensive club. “Provide services for more students”, this is also the concept we emphasized when propagating. Look at our posters here. I think this is also the reason why we have won the favor of many students just at our beginning of establishment.

In addition, considering that apart from ordinary high schools like us, there are many representatives of international schools here listening to my speech, now I am going to introduce more detailly about how we can classify students going abroad and provide corresponding services. We know that most students who plan to go abroad are always certain about their application direction, i.e. what major they would like to apply for. Therefore, they will prepare for competitions and activities in a targeted manner during the first and second grades of high school. And from my perspective, the linguistics club can not only provide opportunities for students who want to learn linguistics, but can also be an excellent platform for conducting interdisciplinary research. For example, when we established the club, we planned to hold a field research during the winter vacation this year. There are currently two ideas for the content of the activity. One is to investigate the dialect changes of the residents of Mount Mei in Nanjing after they moved from Shanghai, and the other one is to investigate the relationship between adjectives describing the dishes on the restaurant menu and their prices. When considering the question of how to promote these reseach projects, I upheld the concept of “Provide services for more students” and designed a set of research propositions for students interested in different majors, for example:

  • Biology: the physiological differences of dialect, the physiological determinants of phonetic phenomena;
  • Computer and data statistics: how to obtain and analyze the corpus;
  • Geography: the geographical factor causing the phenomenon of regional phonetic differentiation;
  • Sociology, history: the evolution of dialects and the social problems it caused;
  • Economy: the relationship between adjectives and prices on the restaurant menu;
  • Politics, national customs, laws: how to formulate policies to protect dialects, etc.

I hope that by following this logic——proceeding from the actual needs of the students in your school——you will never be troubled by your unrealistic ideas any longer. And of course, if you don’t have such troubles currentely, I hope my sharing can help you broaden your ideas of society operation and gain more inspiration~

(B)Reference for the Design of Specific Activities

  1. Translation activities: As a linguistics society, there must be quite a few multilingualists here. Why not take advantage of this by inviting friends who are good at particular languages to undertake some worthwhile translation activities? For example, our society president Zhao has been in contact with Maggie O’Farrell, a famous British fiction writer, and has obtained non-commercial use translation rights for her 2020 fiction “Hamnet” in the name of expanding the horizons of Chinese rural children. However, you know that sometimes it might not be easy to get access the right of translation, so here I have some extra advice. You can download quality viedos from YouTube or Facebook, manually translate them and post them on domestic video channels, as intelligent translation subtitles are not yet widely available. Certainly, if you willing to set current smart translation technologies as your research direction, that would be another great idea. There are vlogers on bilibili and Zhihu sharing such technologies, you can compare them and choose the one you consider as the most suitable to use or promote~
  1. Field research: Linguistics is not only about learning languages, many social phenomena are also worth researching. The two fieldwork proposals I mentioned at the beginning mey serve as reference if you would like to organise relative activities. To introduce a little more details here, what we intend to do is to participate the fieldwork activity together, including interviewing, writing and distributing questionnaires, etc. Once we have collected the data and resources, we can choose different research topics as our interest, then integrate and analyse the resources and materials to complete our papers or reports. I believe that this experience will be very helpful in improving our academic skills, which is highly valued by the top schools all around the world, no matter what majors the paticipants are planning to take in their future studies.
  1. a guide material for beginners && a organised set of questions: Those of you who have participated in the competition will understand that exercising is a crucial part of the International Olympiad Linguistics. Though some of the past papers can be found on the internet, it is difficult to find (free) beginner’s guide material or exercise with organised topics. For students preparing individually, take me myseld for example, last year when there were no clubs or seniors at school to guide me, solving and figuring out the questions on my own was a quite difficult process, as it was sometimes impossible to gauge the difficulty of the questions as well as myy level of solving problems, and I didn’t even know what past questions are proper to choose to practice. I found that many of other IOLs had similar experiences, so I came with an idea that with our experience in the competition, we can set up a guide material for beginners and a organised set of questions for our members, so that their learning will be much easier and more enjoyable.
    In terms of the organization of the set of questions, my plan is as follows.
    ① In the first semester I will offer the club members an introductory training on the basic linguistics competition questions, with a frequency of one question a week.
    ② At the beginning of the second semester I will provide an integration of questions of various categories covering grammar, syntax, lexicography, phonetics, phonology, semantics, numerical questions, odd questions and teamwork questions, etc. The training will last for about a month or two, and may be accompanied by inviting previous contestants or linguistics-oriented undergraduates to deliver relative speeches or lectures on the topic.
    ③ I will organise a mock test and a team selection test for the competition prepation stage after March next year. All participants of IOLC from the whole school (not only limited to club members) can come and take part in the test, which can provide a reference for team formation and preparation.
  1. Academic material integration: I often envy some of the best long-established societies for their own unique academic material integration, which is the best treasure to pass on the next generations of members. The core club members update and enrich this integration with their knowledge, and then pass it on from one generation to the next, who can then pleasantly enjoy the wisdom of their predecessors. As a budding society leader, I cannot say for certain whether our academic pack will be in existence for a long time period in the future, but if you are willing to start this project as we do, I am very glad to share some basic ideas for you.

This is the table of contents of the handbook edited by our President for the would-be language students. As you can see, it starts with a basic introduction to sub-disciplines of linguistics, including phonology, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, etc. As many of our students will become English major students, hence he then introduces some specific research to Chinese language and English language. If you are preparing for the Linguistics Olympiad, you can also modify this part to integrate some of the problem-breaking ideas of the competition questions, for example, when solving numerical questions you should pay attention to the binary, while when you are solving grammar questions you should start with a comparison of the same morphemes in the corpus, etc. Finally, you could add some interesting extra topics such as psychology and sociolinguistics, dialects, or even how to get a hign mark in language exams (e.g. TOEFL and IELTS).

(C) Academic Resources and Access

  • Past papers: itccc official wechat
  • Scientific articles and videos: bilibili zhihu
  • Other materials: Senior Group/Junior Group sample questions and handbook, Chen Run’s “Beginner’s Guide to Linguistics”, NPCSC Linguistics Club competition questions, North American and Russian past papers ……
  • The following is the book list that we have compiled in our handbook for would-be language students, in which there are textbooks from top schools in China and around the world, as well as the recommended ones.

So, in what way should we share academic materials or promote and hold events? Here I have provided some ideas for you. For example, we can advertise through the club QQ group, the school public website and by putting up posters around campus. Regarding the format of the event, we can design offline presentations as well as organise some online lectures, so that even if some students cannot participate in the activity because of other arrangements of their own, they can watch the playback again later on. Finally, the easiest way to share your club’s activities is to upload group files and group albums, or, if you have a club WeChat number, ask a dedicated student to run it. In addition, uploading to online platforms such as bilibili and Zhihu is also a great option. For example, I uploaded the video of our last event to bilibili, and here is a screenshot of one part of it. As you can see, the site has a ‘navigation’ feature, meaning that I can post videos with the start time of each section, so that interested students can watch them as they are needed, which is really convenient.

(D) What can you gain by running a society?

Finally, I would like to get back to the underlying logic of running a society and discuss what the time spent working for a club can bring to you.
I know that actually not all of you are enthusiastic about fulfilling the ‘purpose’ of your application and doing more for the linguistic society, or perhaps you even started out with the idea that starting a club would bring you glory and add colour to your personal statement. But I think you definitely understand that, a full and authentic club experience will be greatly beneficial to your further education and even your life.
As the teacher in charge of our school’s Union of Societies once said, running a society is like running a company. At the beginning you need to define your goals and plans, you need to submit ‘cumbersome’ documents; you need to spend a lot of effort on publicity, during which you may face the helplessness of not being able to recruit enough members; during the process of operation you may encounter differences on ideas with other core members, and only through discussion and concessions can you reach a consensus; you may find that your initial ideas are too idealistic, and the reality forces you to revise or even abandon them.
You may suffer from sacrificing a lot during these days, but I hope you could understand that what you will gain in the end will not only be proficiency in organisation, but also an experience of meeting constant frustration and the grind of reality.

I hope that today’s speech has provided you some useful tips and ideas on how to run your society. Finally, I would like to thank you all for your patience to listen my long speech, and I wish all of you can gain a lot during operating a linguistic society!

The link of video of the sharing speech is:
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/lNJkJ-EkKsrSCof8yHfFTg

The link of video of our last event:
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1gF411a7Rh?share_source=copy_web

And here are my powerpoint slide:













Geography-Related Literature

Guestbook

Authors use the geographic perspective when crafting novels, stories, or other works of fiction. The relationship between people and their natural and constructed environments is often a key part of a story’s plot, theme, or setting. In some books, there will be a large number of descriptions of the natural environment, some books are even based on the exploration of nature as a plot clue. Deeply fascinated by these books, I would like to explore their individual and common features, and how their authors express clearly and perfectly through words about those shocking and touching themes they want to share.

I read two novels during the summer holiday, both of which are closely related to geography. Personally I consider them as typical of geography novels. In the following paragraphs, I would like to share my views on the two books, attempting to sum up the common features of novels of this kind.

I.Earth Science Novels

To begin with, I re-read Jules Verne’s Trilogy( Journey to the Center of the Earth, Around the World in Eighty Days, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas) - it is also them which were my earth science initiation reads that left a lasting impression on me. They are the typical of novels related to earth science, including adventure, science fiction, etc. Apparently, these compositions are characterised by a combination of imagination and modern science, and to some reflect reality to a certain extent.

①First of all, they were written under a background of the Second Industrial Revolution and colonial expansion, backed up by enormous industrial achievements, which, combined with Mr Verne’s magnificent imagination, made these works both realistic and prophetic of the future. For instance, before Verne, a few authors had already tried writing subterranean fictions. However, thanks to his thorough study of Victorian science, Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth is considered as an outstanding one among all this type of book – his concept of a prehistoric realm (which is going to be introduced in detail in the following paragraph) still existing in the present-day world.

Another example of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas is quoted from Wikipedia, which I found as a persuasive evidence for my argument: the diving gear used by passengers on the Nautilus is presented as a combination of two existing systems: 1) the surface-supplied hardhat suit, which was fed oxygen from the shore through tubes; 2) a later, self-contained apparatus designed by Benoit Rouquayrol and Auguste Denayrouze in 1865. Their invention featured tanks fastened to the back, which supplied air to a facial mask via the first-known demand regulator. The diver didn’t swim but walked upright across the seafloor. This device was called an aérophore (Greek for “air-carrier”). Its air tanks could hold only thirty atmospheres, however Nemo claims that his futuristic adaptation could do far better: “The Nautilus’s pumps allow me to store air under considerable pressure … my diving equipment can supply breathable air for nine or ten hours.”

②Second, Verne refers to many achievements of the Industrial Revolution and natural science research in his works, and integrates these esoteric inventive principles into the colorful storyline, making the extensive study of natural sciences live and popularize. For example, in Journey to the Center of the Earth, there is a genuine underground world which is filled by a deep subterranean ocean, and surrounded by a rocky coastline that’s covered with petrified tree trunks, the fossils of prehistoric mammals, and gigantic living mushrooms. At the same time, in the book, Verne discuss the possibility of reaching the center of the earth, basing on theories. He also introduced the protagonists to a variety of geological knowledge during the ‘journey’, including rocks and rock formations, pressure, volcanoes and so on.

③Third, from the perspective of plot, these compositions are often about travel and adventure, which is inseparable from the influence of the Great Navigation Age. The protagonists’ courage to take risks, pioneer the wilderness, and conquer nature has inspired generations of readers, and is also what moved me most when I was a child.

The characters in the novel have their own characteristics. For instance, Nemo in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is an eccentric, knowledgeable, calm and resourceful captain; Professor Aronnax has a great passion for scientific inquiry; while the whaler Nederland has a fiery and straightforward temperament. In Journey to the Center of the Earth, there is Professor Otto Lidenbrock, a hot-tempered geologist with radical ideas; Axel, a cautious young student; and Hans Bjelke, their resourceful and imperturbable guide. In Around the World in Eighty Days, the British gentleman Mr. Falk is as cool as a cucumber – despite the difficulties encountered during the journey, he never complains.
Besides the personalities, they also have a lot in common. First of all, they are very humanitarian and attach great importance to friendship. Mr. Falk spent a lot of precious time saving unknown women and insignificant servants, who also helped him later. Captain Nemo wrestles with sharks to rescue pearl divers; he also tearfully buries his dead companion under the reef. What’s more, they all have a strong spirit of exploration and have always adhered to their beliefs. Even if goals seem impossible to achieve, they never give up.

④Last but not least, social systems, the side effects of the Industrial Revolution, political revolution, etc. were also mentioned in these compostions, that is Verne attempting to provoke people to reflect on the society. Of course, as popular science writer, he used more descriptive than evaluation or satire, in order to present social reality to readers. The most impressive examply is the true identity of Captain Nemo, which was revealed in Verne’s later novel, The Mysterious Land. Born as an East Indian aristocrat, one Prince Dakkar, Nemo participated in a major 19th century uprising, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, which was ultimately quashed by the British. After his family were killed by the British, Nemo fled beneath the seas.

II. Human Geography Novels

The second book I read was Chi Zijian’s “The Right Bank of the Erguna River.”(额尔古纳河右岸) This is a representative of a humanistic and geographical novel. With a 90-year-old Evenk woman recountig her life experience, the book reflects the development of the Evenk people in the past hundred years. This nation lived in the forest, survived under the grace and torture of nature, suffered from Japan’s invasion and experienced the Cultural Revolution. Under the “invasion” of civilization, they had to wander between nomadism and settlement. With a calm and gentle style and ethereal language, Chi Zijian recreates for us the hundred-year persistence of and cultural changes experienced by the Evenk people.

Many people say that this work is an epic elegy of a nation, while personally I think that it is also an elegy about a certain kind of wonderful life, an elegy about a certain kind of values and ways of life of human beings. In the book, people look up at the sky, indulge in rivers and mountains, fear the gods in their hearts, sing simple songs, born in the “sound of the wind”, and finally buried in the wind. In addition to the image as the main character, what is more moving is the changing white clouds, the twinkling starlight, the Shilen Pillar that allow people to see the sky, the reindeer, the moon, the shaman’s dance, the birch and pine trees, and the bright flowing water…… They are not only the background and basis of the characters’ lives, but also the other protagonists in the book. Together, they constitute a beautiful and fragile world, a mixture of joy and suffering, of sadness and happiness.

I greatly appreciate Ms. Chi Zijian’s writing, her way of expression is pure and gentle, as quiet as the snow in the north, integrating with the story she depicts. I think it’s especially important for a human geography or cultural writer to practice a narrative that has its own characteristics. Of course, as just mentioned, the description of the natural environment in the book makes this novel even more gripping.

Interestingly, there are comments on the Internet that this book is very similar to Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude“, which is also a book that I have always been willing to appreciate. It writes about the faces of the mountains, rivers, seas, continents, animals, plants, religious peoples and peoples of the Latin American. Through the fictionalization of the century-long rise and fall of a family, it integrates historical reality and fantasy, interprets the history and destiny of Colombia and even the entire Latin American continent for a century in an epic and magnificent way. In the colorful giant picture, there are not only incredible miracles, but also purest real life. From my perspective, I consider these two books as both the pinnacle of the geographical novels and the jewel of human literature as a whole.

Conclusion

To summarise, all geography-related novels closely combine their plot with the depiction of the natural environment. Through popular science novels, readers can appreciate a lot of science and technology; in cultural novels, there are a great number of descriptions of society and characters’ mind. These novels all discuss the relationship between man and nature, inspiring our enthusiasm for exploring nature or gratitude for it. They also look down on human civilization from the perspective of nature, which not only gives readers a refreshing reading experience, but also provokes us to think deeply.

Review of "A Story of Mankind"

Guestbook

“Why should we ever read fairy stories ,when the truth of history is so much more interesting and entertaining?”

During the reading, I feel myself standing on the top of a mountain, with changes and changes of thousands of years ago under my feet just as passing clouds. Like a stage speaker, Von Loon spoke in soulful tones about the human world’s past and present in this book.He sighed over the destruction of a city, saddened by the barbarians’ trampling on civilization, and cried out for the tragic misfortune of civilians time and time again.

Just as the writer said, when we re-examine the past stories as bystanders, there is neither the flawlessness of winners, nor the uselessness of losers. Instead, vivid characters and episodes of ups and downs compose the history. There are too many impressive plots, some of which even subvert my previous stereotype of history: Christianity was suppressed, just because the believers were dissatisfied with the situation of citizen’s freedom of religion at the time, and tried to make Christianity the only belief of people; in order to realize his dream of becoming a religion leader, Muhammad even married a noble widowhood; after the end of war between Greece and Persia, Athens and Sparta, who had shared a bitter hatred of the enemy, did not take this opportunity to resolve their long-standing grievances. The civil war between the two city-states eventually led to the decline of Greece.

Besides the knowledge, this peculiar book, just as what the “Little History of the World” I read did months ago, once again corrected my prejudices against the “history book”. For example, I used to think that history books are those which list various events in chronological order. But Van Loon was more like telling a story in this book. He focused on the relationship between events and the impact of them on the current world.In addition, I used to think that history books are always written in boring languages and simply display historical facts to the readers. But Van Loon turned these boring events into beautiful stories. He never just described them simply and straightforwardly, instead he often guided readers into the context of history through imaginative descriptions.

“The Story of Mankind” is not a simple history book. It contains Van Loon’s profound thinking about the past and present, and his infinite hope for a better future of mankind. As the famous scholar Qian Mansu said, Van Loon “is not an esoteric theorist, but not necessarily don’t have his own ideology and ideas.” The topics he chose are basically about the most essential issue of human survival and development. What’s more, he showed his belief of the importance of rationality and tolerance in his compositions. “His goal is to challenge the ignorance and paranoia. The way he adopts is to popularize knowledge and truth, and make them common sense.”

The Marshall Society Essay Competition

Guestbook

1/3. The Reason for Entering

This summer holiday I entered the Marshall Essay Competition, which is the second time I compose an essay myself.Firstly, I want to share my reason for entering– perhaps it is more appropriate to call it the reason for this “impulse”.

To be honest, I didn’t mean to take part in this competition at the very beginning, as I believed that the whole process of essay composition would cost a quite long time while I don’t have so much time during this summer. However, one of my original major activity was canceled, leaving me lots of free time. Once in economic class, my teacher showed me several Africa-related materials including GDP, HDI and some local government documents, asking for my comments. We discussed passionately about the current situation of Africa. My teacher analyzed from the perspective of economics, and introduced the economic system of Africa to me, which I was quite interested in. At the same time, I tried to use colonial history and geography to explain local situation, which was also affirmed and supported by the teacher. Suddenly I came up with an idea that there is a topic in this year’s Marshall essay competition about the development of Africa. I realize that this topic plays an extremely important role in modern society, as helping Africa develop can largely promote the reduction of poverty and thus accelerate international development. It is also a humanitarian project. However, this is by no means a simple question. All the factors that affect the local development should be considered, such as history, geography, economic system, political system, education and even culture. This kind of complexity is also the reason why experts and politicians has different perspectives on African issues. To summarize, I think this topic is very meaningful. It not only allows me to have a deeper understanding of the situation in Africa, but also allows me to form my own insights on international hot topics and cultivate my comprehensive analysis skills. Therefore, why not have a try?

2/3. The Process of Composing

Secondly, I would like to share the process of writing this essay, and compare it with my last experience.

It was less than two weeks before the submission deadline when I started preparing. Therefore, a good plan seems quite significant for this urgent task. First of all, I finished writing the outline within the first two days. Then I searched for data materials through Google, Baidu and World Bank. I sort them out, and at the same time developed my paragraphs. During this process I found that there are some arguments in my creation without evidence, thus I looked for their reference again. Finally, since the number of words greatly exceeded the limit, I deleted some redundant content.

The whole process is quite different from that when I participated in the John Locke competition, which I think can be considered as several progress I made when the second time I write essay on my own.

  1. I recognize the importance of references. In the process of last time writing , I paid more attention on summarizing my views and getting inspiration by asking teachers and friends. In this way, although I have indeed came up with loads of my own ideas independently, there are few strong evidences to support them. On the contrary, during the process of this time writing , I read a lot of documents before composing, and what’s helped me a lot is the way of “snowballing” –looking for the parts I need in the references of a paper, therefore expand my scope of reading.
    I felt like my references this time are more substantial and the whole essay reads more professional.
  1. I know more clearly about when to have my tutorial. Last time, my tutor and I made paid a lot of attention to the revising of proposal, but inversely not much to the paragraph development after the outline was completed. Unlikely, this time I only did two tutorials twice. For the first tutorial, I briefly confirmed the structure of the paper to my tutor, making sure that I should divide the paper into four parts: introduction, analysis, suggestion, and conclusion. And I also clarified the content of the two analyses and suggestions with my tutor. Then I started writing the draft by myself. When it was revised to my satisfaction, I sent it to tutor and then he suggested me to adjust the structure of specific paragraphs. In this way, I have a lot of time to polish my words, expressions and make the article reads more accurate.

However, there are still something I need to focus on next time – for example, the time for preparation was quite too limited, and that I only read some of the abstract of references instead of the whole content.

3/3. The Content of Essay

Last but not least, I am going to post my essay here.

This paper is quite different from the ones in the a-level economic examination. It is not a purely economic essay, but rather a land-econ one. And I really appreciate that it needs to use a lot of geographical, historical and other comprehensive factors to analyze the economy and development of a particular region. The following is my essay. It is a pity that some of the graphs and references can not be showed clearly here.

QUE 6: AFRICA HAS OFTEN BEEN DESCRIBED AS THE ‘SHACKLED CONTINENT’. IS THERE STILL HOPE FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA?

FANG Ziyan

Nanjing Foreign Language School

1.Introduction

Three decades of effort on development in Africa have yielded pitiful returns, which accord with its title of ‘the imprisoned continent’[Guest, R. (2010). The shackled continent: Power, corruption, and African lives. Smithsonian Institution.]. African economies have been stagnating, even regressing. Chart 1A shows the GDP per capita of Africa underwent slow growth over the past 30 years, the value of which has always been the lowest or near the lowest among the ones of all continents. Additionally, chart 1B shows the balance of payments (‘BOP’) of African countries have been close to zero in the first fifteen years. Then large fluctuations appeared, even a long-term deficit, indicating the economy to be struggling or weak ones.

This article shall explore the factors that have hindered the economic development of Africa in the past, examining whether they will always hold Africa back, ultimately finding that there is hope for the continent.

Chart 1A GDP per capita of Africa, from 1991 to 2018

(source from World Bank)

Chart 1B BOP of all countries in Africa, from 1991 to 2018

(source from World Bank)

2.Analysis of the economic situation in Africa

2.1 Why has economic development been so poor?

Donald Kaberuka, who served as the president of the African Development Bank, pointed out two main factors which are often used to explain the failure of the development enterprise in Africa.2 The first is structural, including geographic and ecologic elements; for example, the high concentration of landlocked countries, tropical soils, and epidemics, etc. However, these factors are not the decisive ones. Second, and arguably more critical, is the history, politics and economy of African countries.

From the mid-15th century to the 1980s, many African countries were colonies. The colonists took resources but did not leave behind the core technology of the economy, the high-end local human resources, the complete industrial chain, and the design of a reasonable industrial structure based on the characteristics of the colony’s resources.[ 舒运国. (2020). 试析独立后非洲国家经济发展的主要矛盾. 西亚非洲, No.271(02), 93-112.] Hence many problems appeared post-independence. In terms of politics, ethnic and border conflicts left from colonial rule triggered border wars[ Dodo, M. K. (2018). Why is Africa Lagging Behind in Economic Development? A Critical Review. Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, 5(1).]. Terrorism spread, for instance, the “Kobo Haram” in Nigeria and the “Shabaab” in Somalia, which led to multi-party internal fighting.

As for the economic structure, the economic lifeline of a number of large African industries is in the hands of foreigners. For example, major oil companies such as Mobil, BP, CITRON, Eni, Total. Even if there are indeed local giants in Africa, such as De Beers of mining industry and MTN of telecommunications, their true controllers are still British, American and French.

2.2 Effects of these factors

Political turmoil has several adverse effects on African economic growth. Firstly, political instability may prolong production time and reduce commodity values, which directly leads to a decrease in international competitiveness. Second, investment falls. This is because once the political system changes, the uncertainty of future investments greatly increases, resulting in a decrease in investor confidence. Thirdly, there will be a large outflow of economically motivated migrants – a ‘brain drain’.

Furthermore, years of colonization have left Africa with an incomplete industrial chain and high-end development opportunities. The current development of most African countries still relies on the model of export-led growth. Nigeria, for example, experienced a recession in 2015-2016 and its government stated that the major factor responsible was the decline in oil revenues and the over-dependence of the economy on this single commodity [ Source from http://thenewsnigeria.com.ng/2016/09/fg-plansfiscal-stimulus-strategy-to-inject-15bn-in-ailing-economy/]. According to the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis[ Toye, J. F., & Toye, R. (2003). The origins and interpretation of the Prebisch-Singer thesis. History of political Economy, 35(3), 437-467.], an explanation for this phenomenon is that manufactured goods have a greater income elasticity of demand than primary products, especially food. Therefore, as incomes rise, the demand for manufactured goods increases more rapidly than demand for primary products. Furthermore a decline in commodity prices tends to reduce revenue rather than increase it, which can be noted from graph 2A. This explains why, despite being an export-led economy, Nigeria’s balance of trade has been negative in recent years, as chart 2B shows.

Graph 2A

Chart 2B Merchandise exports and imports (current US$) -Nigeria

(source from World Bank)

To evaluate the consequences, it should be noted that oil price changes lead to uncertainty lack of investment, lower aggregate demand (‘AD’) and growth. The collapse in oil prices reduces confidence, leading to declining foreign direct investment from $9.7 billion by the end of the second quarter 2014, to $0.64 billion at the end of the second quarter of 20164.
However, there are several advantages to be noted. When oil prices are high, this can increase net exports, AD and growth (graph 2C). On the other hand, when priced are low, it may result in an increase in the current account deficit which can depreciate currency, making other exports more price competitive and further increase AD and growth. Last but not least, investment of foreign countries in oil production can raise long run aggregate supply (‘LRAS’), which can increase real output, employment and living standards (graph 2D).


Graph 2C


Graph 2D

3.So is there hope?

There is still hope for economic development in Africa; so long as the factors which are dragging down its economic development are overcome, its future is promising.

3.1 Ways to aid Africa

Aids from developed countries are traditional projects. However, as mentioned, local economy has not improved much as a result. According to Dambisa Moyo, the reason is that the specific conditions of African countries have been ignored by donors: many of them do not have effective investment and taxation systems. Direct investment fell into the hands of corrupt bureaucrats and entered the consumption field, instead of the investment one.[ Moyo, D. (2009). Dead aid: Why aid is not working and how there is a better way for Africa. Macmillan.] The increase in AD leads to soaring prices and the emergence of inflation.

On the contrary, new forms of aid offered by developing countries such as China in recent years is more practical and feasible[ Campbell, H. (2008). China in Africa: challenging US global hegemony. Third World Quarterly, 29(1), 89-105.]. China invests in the construction of African infrastructure, in return for natural resources, such as rare metals, and the right to use ports. This cooperation not only helps Africa develop, but also offers China resources. Furthermore, China’s capital inflows have eased the capital outflows of African countries caused by Western investor profit remittances and international debt. Simulataneously, China has partially solved the problem of disconnection between the financial and production sectors in the African economy by investing in the real economy.9 For instance, the local employment driven by infrastructure projects of the China Railway 20th Bureau in Africa has brought long-term productivity improvements[ Brautigam, D. (2011). The dragon’s gift: the real story of China in Africa. OUP Oxford.]. Nevertheless, there are still several shortcomings in the use and distribution of funds by China for aid projects in Africa. For example, it was found that its aid benefited more politically privileged regions (such as the birthplace of leaders) than others. In this regard, China should refer to other aid projects that are more evenly distributed, such as the ones of the World Bank.[ Bluhm, R., Dreher, A., Fuchs, A., Parks, B., Strange, A., & Tierney, M. J. (2018). Connective financing: Chinese infrastructure projects and the diffusion of economic activity in developing countries.]

3.2 From the inside

What the African countries need is not only various types of assistance, but also the establishment of their own economic system. African countries should strive to diversify their economies by developing secondary and tertiary industries. In addition, engaging with the international financial market can be another helpful way to development for African countries. They can obtain the funds needed for conomic development through the issuance of treasury bonds. This enables the country to gradually increase its credit by paying the principal and interest on time, and gradually reduces the risk premium of interest rates.6

Though the physical geography of Africa cannot be changed, several man-made problems can be improved. For example, rapid population growth has strained croplands. This contributes to deforestation, putting pressure on the ability of the region to adapt to climate change and the fragile ecology of the dry lands[ Brahmbhatt, M., Bishop, R., Zhao, X., Lemma, A., Granoff, I., Godfrey, N., & Te Velde, D. W. (2016). Africa’s New Climate Economy: Economic Transformation and Social and Environmental Change.]. To solve this problem, intensifying agriculture to boost yields, combined with climate-smart farming techniques, can help raise farmers’ incomes, reduce environmental degr dation and strengthen resilience to climate change. To summarize, strategies which recognize the close links between economic, social and environmental priorities are helpful in the long run.

4.Conclusion

Ultimately, although many factors have hindered economic development in Africa, there is still hope. However, while there are solutions to the problems in theory, their implementation is by no means an easy task. The primary economic structure has taken root in African countries for a long time. It is not easy to carry out the transformation which requires sufficient technology and a large amount of capital. The settlement of social turmoil and national conflict cannot be accomplished overnight as well. Similarly, the geographical issues cannot be completely resolved in the short term.

Many countries and organizations are making efforts in the development of Africa, in order to accelerate the development of the world economy. They are constantly improving aid projects or development policies, looking for more proper ones. Therefore, the future looks bright.

ADDITION: BIBLIOGRAPHY

> [1]Guest, R. (2010). The shackled continent: Power, corruption, and African lives. Smithsonian Institution.
> [2]舒运国. (2020). 试析独立后非洲国家经济发展的主要矛盾. 西亚非洲, No.271(02), 93-112.
> [3]Dodo, M. K. (2018). Why is Africa Lagging Behind in Economic Development? A Critical Review. Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, 5(1).
> [4]http://thenewsnigeria.com.ng/2016/09/fg-plansfiscal-stimulus-strategy-to-inject-15bn-in-ailing-economy/
> [5]Toye, J. F., & Toye, R. (2003). The origins and interpretation of the Prebisch-Singer thesis. History of political Economy, 35(3), 437-467.
> [6]Moyo, D. (2009). Dead aid: Why aid is not working and how there is a better way for Africa. Macmillan.
> [7]Campbell, H. (2008). China in Africa: challenging US global hegemony. Third World Quarterly, 29(1), 89-105.
> [8]Brautigam, D. (2011). The dragon's gift: the real story of China in Africa. OUP Oxford.
> [9]Bluhm, R., Dreher, A., Fuchs, A., Parks, B., Strange, A., & Tierney, M. J. (2018). Connective financing: Chinese infrastructure projects and the diffusion of economic activity in developing countries.
> [10]Brahmbhatt, M., Bishop, R., Zhao, X., Lemma, A., Granoff, I., Godfrey, N., & Te Velde, D. W. (2016). Africa's New Climate Economy: Economic Transformation and Social and Environmental Change.

John Locke Essay Competition

Guestbook

This is the first time that I took part in an English essay writing competition. I didn’t won a prize, anyway. Nevertheless, this experience is quite precious for me– for my English study, my essay writing skills, and my critical thinking training.

I’ve never written an essay before. I’m always good at composing Chinese novels and narrations, as I love telling stories, love describing scenes and landscapes. But when it comes to write an organized professional essay, I hadn’t got any idea. Therefore, the whole process of composing this John Locke essay is literally challenging for me.

    1. There are several topics that I can choose from, and I finally decided to compose a historical one. I’m interested in considering the philosophy nature of history, and thinking of the variety of people’s opinions on historical events. Hence I choose this topic: Should we judge those from the past by the standards of today? How will historians in the future judge us?
      Then after I chose the topic, I started to list an outline of the article, select my arguments by brainstorming. I asked my tutor to check that whether my proposal could be improved. He proposed that some arguments are kind of decisive and need more evidence to prove them. Hence I started looking for historical materials, and completed specific paragraphs. I was in contact with tutor during this process. Sometimes I find that my original logic is not feasible, sometimes I get new inspiration– I even break away from the traditional writing format and dare to challenge the question( which I added in my intro).
    1. Vocabulary and expressions is also a disturbing part. Sometimes I don’t know how to express in a accurate way, sometimes don’t know about a exact academic word. But I tried my best to force myself to think in English and make my essay reads more fluent. I determined to expand my vocabulary since then… :P
    1. Though I worked hard on this essay, there are still a lot parts need to be improved. For example, I cited few references in my essay, which makes it not convincing enough. I also felt that my ideas are not that creative and always traditional, even stuffy. Hence I would like to do more critical thinking training in the future.

Whatever, here I’ll record my first experience of writing a formal essay. Hope that I can improve my skills and compose better ones one day.

Addition (my essay) :

TOPIC: SHOULD WE JUDGE THOSE FROM THE PAST BY THE STANDARDS OF TODAY? HOW WILL HISTORIANS IN THE FUTURE JUDGE US?

Since the ‘cultural turn’ of the 1970s, considerable attention has been given to the issue of whether historians should judge the past. How historians judge the past substantially depends upon the historiographical methods available to them. In recent years, the rapid development of big data technology has enabled new modes of historical enquiry and analysis. As a consequence, how historian judge the past and the ‘standards of today’ are constantly changing. On an individual level, the way in which past societies are ‘judged’ depends on the personal political beliefs and moral values that contemporaries hold. Views vary from person to person. Some people belief that we should judge those from past by the standards of today because the lessens of the past may be practically or usefully applied in the present. On the contrary, others strongly argue against this approach, viewing the application of present standards onto the past as ahistorical and misleading. They instead propose that it is more appropriate to evaluate past events based on standards of that time.

These different positions on whether we should judge those from the past by the standards of today assume that historians can detach themselves from present standards. However, none of us can get rid of the influence of the history education we receive today. In all aspects of historical enquiry, the standards of the present influence how we understand and evaluate the past. This is reflected in the historical subjects we choose to study, the historical sources we choose to examine and the methods of historical analyze that we employ. In all this, we can never get out of our own attitudes and cannot stop using standards of today. Accepting this, the best way of judging a particular historical event is to evaluate it from different aspects, using various criteria. Such criteria include moral, economic, and epistemological standards. Whether we should judge those events by the standards of today depends on the property of each criterion.

There is no established set of standards that is universally shared. This is reflected in the differences in moral standards in our own time. For instance, experts have various opinions on the hotly debated issue of whether the ‘precautionary principle’ should become part of national and international law. The ‘precautionary principle’ is an approach used by policymakers to decide whether to adopt new innovations and technologies. It is commonly used when such innovations are potentially harmful and when there is limited scientific research on their potential negative impacts. Agne Sirinskiene argues that ‘precautionary principle’ is becoming or even has already become a rule of customary national and international law in her essay The Status of Precautionary Principle : Moving Towards a Rule of Customary Law.[ A. Sirinskiene, The Status of Precautionary Principle: Moving Towards a Rule of Customary Law (Jurisprudencija, 2009)] Conversely, Ken Cussen argued in Handle with Care: Assessing the Risks of the Precautionary Principle that the ‘precautionary principle’ is dangerous as it is often invoked as a way of handling risk in situations of scientific uncertainty.[ K. Cussen, Handle with Care: Assessing the Risks of the Precautionary Principle (Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, 2009)] The idea that there are no set of moral standards is also true historically. This evident in contemporary conceptions of the ‘Age of Discovery’. European missionaries saw colonial expansion as a way of exporting Christianity and ‘saving the souls’ of indigenous populations who held different religious beliefs. On the other hand, the violent methods used in this period was also understood to bring many harms. Bartolomé de las Casas condemned the violence of European expansion in the ‘New World’ in his Historia de las Indias (1561). In both contemporary and past societies, there was no consensus or established set of ‘standards’ by which people understood the past.

Using different criteria to evaluate history – as a way of combating the projection of present standards onto the past – has its own set of problems. This is evident in economic evaluations of the past. Economic development in the past is often evaluated according to prevailing economic values and ideas. However, when historians project economic standards based on modern ideas of capitalism back onto earlier periods of history, they misunderstand that earlier societies did not understand the economy according to these ideas. The idea of ‘Classical Economics’ – the earliest concept of economics – only first appeared in Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations which was published in 1776. There is no doubt that the change in GDP per capita can be considered as significant measure of economic ‘progress’. However, the conception of GDP was proposed in the 1930s. The use of GDP to measure the economic success of past societies assumes that these societies sought to maximize GDP and understood this as a measure of ‘progress’. In most cases there is no comparison between the way people from the past judged economic development and the way in which we do today. For example, in the Middle Ages, rulers in feudal agrarian societies believed that their economic policies should ensure social stability. Consequently, they paid more attention to changes in the price of goods and crop harvests to determine their economic policies. They did not consider GDP per capita, nor did they need to compare their economic conditions with other countries, in their conception of their economic development. In the case of economics, historian must judge the past using the economic standards of that time.

Similar issues can be found with epistemological evaluations of the past. Knowledge from the past is often discredited or ignored if it does not fit present understanding or standards of knowledge production. However, we should not judge knowledge from the past by the standards of today. Greater emphasis should be placed on assessing the influence of past ideas in their own time and their impact on subsequent developments in knowledge. This is most evident in the historical connections and developments in scientific knowledge. Although many of Aristotle’s views were overturned by later researchers, these ‘wrong ideas’ had a great influence on people’s worldview at that time. For example, Aristotle asserted in De Caelo (350 BC) that the speed at which an object falls is proportional to its weight. According to this view, heavier objects would fall faster than lighter ones. However, Galileo, a sixteenth century scientist, repudiated this idea which had been accepted for centuries. In The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), he proposed that the object’s descending speed has nothing to do with its weight. Galileo postulated that if the air resistance of two objects with different weights is the same or can be ignored, then the two objects will fall at the same speed and reach the ground at the same time. He verified this hypothesis by dropping two iron balls from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Galileo overturned Aristotle’s earlier assertion and laid the foundation for modern kinematics theory, a theory which can be considered a ‘standard of today’. The issues raised by the examples of economic and epistemological standards shows that historians should not judge the past by the standards of today and instead should use a combination of different criteria to try to offer a more balanced view.

One of the major issues with using the standards of today to evaluate the past is that these standards are constantly changing with time. Considering how historians in the future will judge us is therefore difficult to ascertain. However, there are broad trends in historical methodology and analysis that look like to continue based on recent technological developments. The development of big data technology such as computer algorithms for analyzing historical data and chemical methods such as carbon dating will result in greater accuracy in historical evidence. This will enable historians to have a more extensive and comprehensive collection of historical data. Thus, future judgments are more likely to offer an objective analysis of the past and be less colored by contemporary biases and standards.

When judging a particular historical event, the most comprehensive way is to evaluate the past is to consider different aspects and criteria, namely moral, economic, and epistemological standards. Whether we should judge those events by the standards of today depends on how applicable these criteria were in past societies and how they understood their own societies and the world around them.

Bibliography

Agne Sirinskiene: The Status of Precautionary Principle: Moving Towards a Rule of Customary Law. (Jurisprudencija, 2009)
Ken Cussen: Handle with Care: Assessing the Risks of the Precautionary Principle (K Cussen - Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, 2009)
Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaulti de Galilei: Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo, tolemaico e copernicano
Isaac Newton: Mathematical Principles of Nature Philosophy (1687)
Aristotle: De Caelo
Jared Diamond: Guns,Germs,and Steel:The Fates of Human Societies(1997)
Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich: The Little History of the World (1936)
L. S. Stavrianos:A Global History: From Prehistory to the 21st Century (1970)

Result of IOL and thoughts of linguistics study

Guestbook

I attended the International Olympics Linguistics China this year.

In the open round I got the first prize. In the final round, though unfortunately, I caught gastroenteritis, I still got the silver medal in China. Perhaps this ‘failure’ is also a reminder of the importance of being healthy. Alright, honestly it is a unique experience to take part in this competition and I would like to record it in this blog.

As for the subject of linguistics itself, I got a brief understanding of what and how linguist study. I read several materials of this subject to get some professional knowledge, and I also experience the way linguists sum up rules from the corpus through the process of solving problems in the competition. Besides the subject itself, I tried to explore the connections between subjects either. For instance, I found a clear logic could be quite helpful when solving problems. I need to record my inspirations and my ideas, to make sure that I can find the rule step by step. What’s more, it is literally surprising that I also found that it is easier for me to understand the problems and materials in the Chinese, political and history exams. I reckon that this is because as I got a deeper understanding of the structure of sentences and words, I became more confident and less confused when reading long and obscure articles.

About the exercise I have done for preparation, I did several past papers to get familiar with the possible problems that I need to solve. Also, I searched for some professional books and videos that give some tips of how to be more competitive in this match. I organized the professional knowledge that I had learned into mind maps and notes, and added new key points as soon as I met them in the process of doing past papers. My deskmate Angle took part in IOL too, thus we often share the difficult problems we found with each other. I really enjoy this process of exercising.

It is a pity that we don’t have a team match because of the virus. If I’m going to take part in the IOLC in the next year, I will definitely try to do some group works with my teammates.

AL vs Gaokao -- the Difference between British and Chinese Education System

Guestbook

This is the end of my senior one. This year I studied in a famous normal senior high school, in which many of the students are preparing for Gaokao – the entrance examination of the university in China. Besides, I also prepared a lot for the A Level test. Though I cannot find a proper teacher in my city, I tried to study by myself. Here I got some ideas about the difference between British and Chinese Education System.

To begin with, I would like to compare the textbooks or sessions in the two countries.

①Length of study: three years for Gaokao and two years for A level.

②Subjects: Gaokao includes Chinese, mathematics, English, physics or history, and two subjects of biology, politics, geography, and chemistry, while A-level learners choose 3-4 subjects from more than 70 subjects.

③Sessions: Gaokao students study all 9 subjects in the first year of high school, and choose the subjects of the high school entrance examination in the second year. A level learners study the AS course in the first year of high school, and the A2 course in the second year of high school.

④Allocation of knowledge in different levels: Gaokao textbooks are divided by topics of the knowledge, while A level textbooks always have all the knowledge in them, but the difficulty increases with the order of the textbooks.

Secondly, their ways of testing have some part in common, while there are also some different parts. As for natural science subjects, AL focus more in the interpretation of daily phenomena, while Gaokao mainly pay attention to the analysis and calculation of ideal models. However, regarding social science subjects, both of them contain multiple choice questions about the key points in the textbook and essay writing sessions.

Last but not least, I concluded various ways of exercising according to the two system. For natural science subjects, AL learners should pay more attention to applying the knowledge from their textbooks in daily life; and of course they should also understand the sample questions in the book too. Gaokao learners need to do a lot of exercises to make sure they would not make any mistakes while analysising and calculating, and it’s better for them to summarize the types of different questions. As for the social science subjects, regardless of in which education system, students are required to accumulate a lot of reading.

PS:

I’ve got a satisfactory score in the final exam- thanks to the special learning method which I learnt from Feynman! I would like to share the method here since it’s always so helpful.

  • Step 1: Determine learning goals and learn by myself.
  • Step 2: Teaching. My friend Amy and I taught each other the subjects we were good at, trying to make each other understood.
  • Step 3: Review. Reflect on the problems encountered in step 2, such as where it got stuck and where the other party did not really understand. Record these issues.
  • Step 4: Simplify. I will reorganize and understand the problems encountered, learn as much background and relevant knowledge as possible, and then re-express it in a simplified way as much as possible, trying to grasp the key points and see through the essence. Then, return to step 2.

I am so addicted to this way of learning and reviewing that sometimes I even try it by teaching no one but me myself!